A virtual machine (VM) architecture logically partitions a physical machine, such that the underlying hardware of the machine is time-shared and appears as one or more independently operation virtual machines. A computer platform in a virtual machine environment may comprise a virtual machine monitor (VMM) that may create a plurality of virtual machines and runs on the computer platform to facilitate for other software the abstraction of one or more virtual machines.
A homogeneous virtualization platform may comprise a plurality of virtual machines in which all of the virtual machines comply with host system architecture that the underlying hardware machine supports. The term ‘system architecture’ may comprise a set of registers, data structures, and instructions designed to support basic system-level operations such as memory management, interrupt and exception handling, task management and control of multiple processors, possibly other tasks.